no longer forgotten music,
underground counterpart to Ubuweb. The stupid but
obvious appreciation would be merely sentimental and historicist.
Listening to a ca. 100 hour selection [of which a semirandom
selection could include de Fabriek, Peter Sterk, Horst Rickels, Ynse
Vugts, Moniek Toebosch, Schlaflose Nächte], it matters little from which
period and culture the audio is from, but all the more that it's
improptu, unpretentious and surprising. The best of it defies both
categories and musical stereotypes of either pop music or academic
avant-garde. (The cheap, low tech, read-writable technology of the tapes
might have helped in this respect; sentimentalizing and
retro-fetishizing it, however, would this work further injustice. The
anonymous blogger is thus right selling those tapes while keeping the
mp3 files.)

Asked by Rotterdam's WORM.shop to compile its
next "Top 9" selection of music, films and books available in the store:

Peter Tscherkassky, Films from a Dark Room (DVD)

Tscherkassky's multi-layered found footage films are as visually and mentally intense as cinema can possibly be - rare examples of film reaching the density of the best poetry and music. They are a historic high point of experimental film while drawing on the language of big screen movies.

Francis Picabia, La Nourrice Américaine (CD)

A piano piece first performed at a Dada soiree in 1920 and consisting of only three infinitely repeated notes. More radical than the "Vexations" of Picabia's close friend Erik Satie, it anticipates La Monte Young and Terry Riley by forty years.

Wha-ha-ha, Getahaitekonakucha (CD)

A hidden gem from the early 1980s if not the best record of that whole decade: Free Jazz mixes with and is interrupted by cartoon soundtrack music, schmaltzy synth pop, theater pieces, Japanese folklore, dub - composed and played with unmatched wit, inventiveness and virtuosity.

Cornelius Cardew, Chamber Music 1955-1964: Apartment House (CD)

Early, interesting works of the later member of AMM and founder of The Scratch Orchestra. Cardew, a student of Stockhausen who later renounced his teacher as an "imperialist", is still finding his own way here between strict serial composition, Cagean indeterminacy and non-academic radical improvisation.

Coolhaven, Strømbloque Phantasiën (CD)

An opera based on the German autobiography of David Hasselhoff, with its text as both the libretto and musical MIDI score, performed by guest singers and the band - Peter Fengler from De Player, Hajo Doorn and Lukas Simonis from WORM - itself. What more needs to be said about this instant contemporary classic by Rotterdam's super group?

Dieter Roth is little known "outside" but has been highly influential inside concrete poetry, Fluxus and postpunk underground culture. The latter - among others: Wolfgang Müller, Namosh and Stereo Total - pays posthumous tribute to the German-Swiss-Icelandic universal artist here with musical adaptations of his poems: "When life straightens up again / after falling into the pit / then I've spotted the pitfall / and beat life to shit".

Jodi, SPAM (book)

Not untypical for Jodi, this work simply is what its title says - a printed collection of Internet spam that turns into "concrete" poetry and art in the most literal - yet, as always in jodi's work, strangely beautiful - sense.

Satan's Bed (DVD)

A 1965 black-and-white exploitation flick directed by the notorious Michael ("Snuff") Findlay starring Yoko Ono, back then the best established artist of the New York Fluxus group, as a mail order bride kidnapped by lowlife sex fiends. Shot one year before Ono's famous "naked butts" Flux[ploitation] film, this one however didn't make it into the modern art canon.

Electronic interpretation of Francis Picabia's infinitely repeating three-note-one-pause musical piece La Nourrice Américaine (1920), using only sinewaves (at 69.30, 87.31, 77.78 and 0 Hz) and a tempo of 60 bpm repeated 840 times (lifted from Picabia's close friend Satie). Quick-and-dirty sequencing with LMMS, editing with sox. Rationale: The first of the two piano interpretations by Tom Feldschuh published by LTM on CD is too fast, the second too slow. In 1920, the piano was arguably the most generic and impersonal musical instrument, today, the sine wave certainly is a better match to Picabia's industrial object drawings from that period. Question: Is the correspondence to Picabia's Portrait d'une jeune fille américaine dans l'état de nudité from 1915, showing a light bulb with "For-Ever" printed on, coincidental or not?

Re-issue of Meet Lt. Murnau, 1983:
"Lieutenant Murnau was invented as the name of a ghost musical group. It was started in 1980 and ended in 1984. The image came from a photograph of film director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau while serving as lieutenant in the German army. This photograph was taken and reproduced onto posters, leaflets, fanzines, badges and all other memorabilia of pop mythology to create an interest in something that did not exist. The next step was to provide Lt. Murnau fans with invisible music. I managed to produce various records and cassettes without playing a single note, simply releasing mixages of recorded music. The 'Meet Lt. Murnau' tape, for example, was a deliberate confusion of Beatles and Residents records. I also used soundtracks of F.W. Murnau's films and music provided by other groups in hommage to Murnau. To mess up things even more, I had some of these tapes and records released in different countries by different people. Lt. Murnau also appeared on stage, masked, mixing different records and crucifying a Beatles LP. Hundreds of life-size Lt. Murnau-cardboard masks were printed which people could wear. Anybody could make Lt. Murnau music and become Lt. Murnau, and a few people did it. The whole project was focussed on a very limited idea, that of underground music, and did not have the broader implications of the Monty Cantsin philosophy. Yet, I think, the problems remain the same." (Vittore Baroni)

Completed video [1:26 min.] of the second Tape Treff at Extrapool, Nijmegen,
according to Frans de
Waard
"an evening on cassettes [...] hi-jacked by not always stable noise
makers who think its still shocking to run around naked and throwing up
on microphones":